HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for HP Inc. HP Labs' headquarters is in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

and the group has research and development facilities in Bristol, UK. The development of programmable desktop calculators, inkjet printing, and 3D graphics are credited to HP Labs researchers. HP Labs was established on March 3, 1966, by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

founders

Bill Hewlett William Redington Hewlett ( ; May 20, 1913 – January 12, 2001) was an American engineer and the co-founder, with David Packard, of the Hewlett-Packard, Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). Early life and education Hewlett was born in Ann Arbor, Mic ...

and David Packard, seeking to create an organization not bound by day-to-day business concerns. The labs have downsized dramatically; in August 2007, HP executives drastically diminished the number of projects, down from 150 to 30. As of 2018, HP Labs has just over 200 researchers, compared to earlier staffing levels of 500 researchers. With

Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas. It is a business-focused organization which works in servers, storage, networking, containerization software and ...

being spun off from Hewlett-Packard on November 1, 2015, and the remaining company being renamed to HP Inc., the research lab also spun off Hewlett Packard Labs to

and HP Labs was kept for HP Inc.

History

As the Semiconductor Lab's first manager,

Mohamed Atalla Mohamed M. Atalla (; August 4, 1924 – December 30, 2009) was an Egyptian-American engineer, physicist, cryptographer, inventor and entrepreneur. He was a semiconductor pioneer who made important contributions to modern electronics. He is best ...

launched a material science investigation program that provided a base technology for

gallium arsenide Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a Zincblende (crystal structure), zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monoli ...

, gallium arsenide phosphide and

indium arsenide Indium arsenide, InAs, or indium monoarsenide, is a narrow-bandgap semiconductor composed of indium and arsenic. It has the appearance of grey cubic crystals with a melting point of 942 °C. Indium arsenide is similar in properties to gallium ars ...

devices. These devices became the core technology used by HP's Microwave Division to develop sweepers and

network analyzers Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

that pushed 2040 GHz frequency, giving HP more than 90% of the

military communications Military communications or military signals involve all aspects of communications, or conveyance of information, by armed forces. Examples from '' Jane's Military Communications'' include text, audio, facsimile, tactical ground-based communica ...

market by the 1970s. HP Labs was involved in HP's

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in some countries as OKB, experiment and design, is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products. R&D constitutes the first stage ...

(R&D) on practical

light-emitting diode A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corre ...

s (LEDs) between 1966 and 1969. The first practical LED displays were built at Atalla's Semiconductor Lab. HP introduced the first commercial LED display in 1968. In February 1969, they introduced the HP Model 5082-7000 Numeric Indicator. It was the first intelligent LED display, and was a revolution in

digital display A display device is an output device for presentation of information in visual or tactile form (the latter used for example in tactile electronic displays for blind people). When the input information that is supplied has an electrical signal ...

technology, replacing the

Nixie tube A Nixie tube ( ), or cold cathode display, is an electronics, electronic device used for display device, displaying numerals or other information using glow discharge. The glass tube contains a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes, shaped like ...

and becoming the basis for later LED displays. In 1977, HP Labs fabricated prototypes of the DMOS (double-diffused MOSFET), a type of power MOSFET. They demonstrated that it was superior to the

VMOS A VMOS () (vertical metal oxide semiconductor or V-groove MOS) transistor is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). VMOS is also used to describe the V-groove shape vertically cut into the substrate material. ...

(V-groove MOSFET) with its lower on-resistance and higher breakdown voltage. The DMOS became the most common power transistor used in power electronics. During the early 90s, HP Labs invented the concept of an Explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC) instruction set, which led to the

Intel Itanium architecture IA-64 (Intel Itanium architecture) is the instruction set architecture (ISA) of the discontinued Itanium family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors. The basic ISA specification originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was subsequently implemented by ...

. Towards the end of the 90s, HP Labs worked on a precursor to web services, known as e-Speak. In 1999, HP Labs and

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

built the world's first molecular logic gate for eventual application in chemically assembled nano-computers. During the 2000s, HP Labs in Bristol created

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

, a

semantic web The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable. To enable the encoding o ...

framework.

Research areas

Today, HP Labs specializes in products and solutions related to laptops and tablets, desktop computers, printers, ink and toner cartridges, display accessories and business solutions.

3D printing

HP Labs has made a substantial investment in the development of HP MultiJet Fusion technology. Previously, MetalJet technology was jointly developed between the 3D Print business and HP Labs, allowing for advanced metals to be incorporated in

3D printing 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer ...

Microfluidics

The lab invents

microfluidic Microfluidics refers to a system that manipulates a small amount of fluids (10−9 to 10−18 liters) using small channels with sizes of ten to hundreds of micrometres. It is a multidisciplinary field that involves molecular analysis, molecular bi ...

and imaging technologies for markets beyond office and home print, such as flexible packaging, life sciences, and sensing. The lab has also worked to develop a new method for isolating rare cancer cells.

Security

Security research began in the 1990s, leading to the co-founding of the TCPA alliance, later known as the Trusted Computing Group. In 2001, a Trusted Linux OS offering was created amongst many years of

trusted computing Trusted Computing (TC) is a technology developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group. The term is taken from the field of trusted systems and has a specialized meaning that is distinct from the field of confidential computing. With Trust ...

development. Various research projects led to product features such as Virus Throttle, HP SureStart, Printer Runtime Intrusion Detection, HP Connection Inspector and HP SureAdmin.

Directors

The following have served as Director of HP Labs since its foundation in 1966. * Barney Oliver (1966–81) *John Doyle (1981–84) * Joel Birnbaum (1984–86 and 1991–99) *Don Hammond (1986–87) *Frank Carrubba (1987–91) *Ed Karrer (1999) *Dick Lampman (1999–2007) * Prith Banerjee (2007–2012) *Chandrakant Patel (interim; April 7, 2012 – Nov 2012) *Martin Fink (2012–2016) *Shane Wall (2016–2021) *Tolga Kurtoglu (2021–2022)

Lab locations

HP Labs has laboratories in two major sites: *

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, United States (founded in 1966) *

Bristol Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, the most populous city in the region. Built around the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by t ...

, England, UK (founded in 1983) Former sites: *

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

, Israel (founded in 1984) *

St Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, Russia (founded in 2007) *

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, China (founded in 2005) *Fusionopolis,

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

(founded in 2010) *Cambridge,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

, United States (also known as CRL, a former DEC research lab) *

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

, India (founded in 2002) *

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

, United States *

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

, Japan (founded in 1990)

Notable people

Some of the former employees of HP's Research Labs include: *

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist who pioneered work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) design. At Xerox ...

: best known for his pioneering work on

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...

and windowing

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) design *

Mohamed M. Atalla Mohamed M. Atalla (; August 4, 1924 – December 30, 2009) was an Egyptian-American engineer, physicist, cryptographer, inventor and entrepreneur. He was a semiconductor pioneer who made important contributions to modern electronics. He is best ...

: best known for the MOSFET transistor and the world's first hardware security module (HSM) business, Atalla. * Colin Needham: the founder of

IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

. * R. Stanley Williams: best known for his re-discovery of the

memristor A memristor (; a portmanteau of ''memory resistor'') is a non-linear two-terminal electrical component relating electric charge and magnetic flux linkage. It was described and named in 1971 by Leon Chua, completing a theoretical quartet of ...

* Norman Jouppi: one of the computer architects at the MIPS Stanford University Project (under John L. Hennessy) *

Jim Gettys Jim Gettys (born 15 October 1953) is an American computer programmer. Activity Gettys worked at Digital Equipment Corporation, DEC's Cambridge Research Laboratory. He is one of the original developers of the X Window System at MIT and worked ...

: one of the original developers of the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

* Joel S. Birnbaum: known for his contributions to computer architectures, including

RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...

and

EPIC Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film defined by the spectacular presentation of human drama on a grandiose scale Epic(s) ...

architecture * Prith Banerjee: a CTO at a number of companies. * Kay-Yut Chen: an expert in behavioral economics. * Bernard M. Oliver: inventor of Pulse-code modulation (PCM) * Mark S. Miller: inventor of the

E programming language E is an object-oriented programming language for secure distributed computing, created by Mark S. Miller, Dan Bornstein, Douglas Crockford, Chip Morningstar and others at Electric Communities in 1997. E is mainly descended from the concurre ...

. * Alexander Stepanov: primary designer and implementer of the C++ Standard Template Library. * James B. Saxe: known for automated theorem proving and other computer science topics. * Kimberly Keeton: best known for advancing database and storage technology. * Josh Fisher: best known for his work on

VLIW Very long instruction word (VLIW) refers to instruction set architectures that are designed to exploit instruction-level parallelism (ILP). A VLIW processor allows programs to explicitly specify instructions to execute in parallel computing, para ...

architectures, compiling, and

instruction-level parallelism Instruction-level parallelism (ILP) is the Parallel computing, parallel or simultaneous execution of a sequence of Instruction set, instructions in a computer program. More specifically, ILP refers to the average number of instructions run per st ...

. * Marc Stiegler: who investigated planetary scale computing. * Bernardo Huberman: known for his research in the economics and ecology of computation. * Abraham Lempel: inventor of several data compression algorithms, including

LZ77 and LZ78 LZ77 and LZ78 are the two lossless data compression algorithms published in papers by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv in 1977 and 1978. They are also known as Lempel-Ziv 1 (LZ1) and Lempel-Ziv 2 (LZ2) respectively. These two algorithms form the bas ...

and

Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm The Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) is an algorithm used to perform lossless data compression. It has been used in the 7z format of the 7-Zip archiver since 2001. This algorithm uses a Dictionary coder, dictionary compression scheme ...

. * Phillip Kuekes: inventor of the crossbar latch in semiconductor manufacturing. * Dave Cliff: inventor of the ZIP

trading algorithm Algorithmic trading is a method of executing orders using automated pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for variables such as time, price, and volume. This type of trading attempts to leverage the speed and computational resources of ...

. * Steve Simske: known for advances in printing and forensics.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control * Research organizations in the United States